Your part in the show
What to know before the On Air sign lights up
Christmas on the Dial is a 1950s Christmas Eve radio broadcast on WMRG, staged live, and your ticket comes with a job. You are the studio audience. The hosts will talk to you, and now and then the broadcast will need your help.
The broadcast goes on the air at the time printed on your ticket. The studio does not wait that long. From the moment the doors open it is being put together in front of you: microphones carried in, the On Air sign checked, and Chester, the floor manager, running the whole operation off a clipboard. Some of the ushers may be in on it too.
Whenever you get to your seat, something is already going on. Get there early and you can watch WMRG build the biggest night of its year from nothing.
Chester never goes on the air, so he talks to the studio audience with placards. The one you will see most often says APPLAUSE. When it goes up, clap like you mean it. He can tell.
He has a few more placards in his stack. You will find out what they say when he needs them.
Four of the songs are sung with the audience: Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, Silent Night and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. You know them already, or the chorus at least, and the rest of the room will carry you through the verses.
Nobody up there is grading. Loud beats right, every time. The full song list has the story behind each one.
Christmas on the Dial is for all ages, and the children in the audience get a part of their own. Near the end of the broadcast they are invited up on stage for a reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," done in a way you have never heard before. The young at heart are welcome to join them.
Before that, keep an eye on the attic. Maggie is running a game for her little cousins, and any child in the audience can play along from their seat.
If you brought anything in a wrapper, open it before the broadcast starts. Chester will explain why.
The stage is split in two. On one side, Bing Marlow and Vivian Vale are putting WMRG's Christmas Eve broadcast on the air. On the other is an attic in the present day, where a few cousins have found an old radio that should not work. The Narrator, in an old armchair in the attic, tells you what you need to know, and not a word more.
Meet the characters before you go.
